


memory, rewritten

by augustbird



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Pining, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), mind sharing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 05:39:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14664426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/augustbird/pseuds/augustbird
Summary: The only way to remove the trigger words is by resetting the associations in Bucky's mind.  Unfortunately, Steve is the only one who can help.





	memory, rewritten

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Память. Перезагрузка](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16046459) by [fandom_Evanstan_and_Co_2018](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandom_Evanstan_and_Co_2018/pseuds/fandom_Evanstan_and_Co_2018), [Zamykaet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zamykaet/pseuds/Zamykaet)



> this fic sponsored by the residual mania of coming off a 2 month surgery clerkship and sufjan stevens' on repeat for 24 hours straight. thanks to twitter for listening to me whine <3

It's nearing two in the morning when Steve enters Wakandan airspace, the illusionary barrier of cliff and trees still fifty miles ahead. His fingers twitch on the control panel, half thinking about pulling the aircraft back because it was far too early in the morning to be considered anything but rude to drop by for an unannounced visit and he'd already overstepped T'Challa's gracious welcome by far too much--

The communication link opens. "Captain Rogers," someone says, "Our apologies. We had not been expecting you."

He'd immediately climbed into the quinjet after the last base near Krasnoyarsk hand been cleaned of anything useful. This time it'd included an unexpected five half-disintegrated notebooks containing three weeks worth of experiments done on one Winter Soldier in the spring of 1985. Steve didn't have a single clue what the cyrillic lettering meant, but there had been enough diagrams and pictures to give him enough of an idea and before he knew what he was doing, the quinjet was already lifting off and in the direction of Wakanda, the last rigged explosion muted by the falling snow.

"I should be the one apologizing," Steve says, "I didn't make any formal request."

"We are lifting our barrier," the voice replies smoothly, "Someone will be there to greet you."

_____

Someone turns out to be Shuri, who's dressed in a shirt and jeans with the light of her phone reflecting off her face as she stand near the entrance of the airfield. Steve ducks out of the quinjet, feeling both incredibly guilty that he'd pulled her out of bed and immediately ashamed of his own tattered appearance. He'd gone two missions straight in the last forty-eight hours and slept on the quinjet without a chance to clean off the soot or dried blood.

"Steve," Shuri calls out, "Did you know--you were just the man I was hoping to see."

The apology dies on his tongue. "Am I now?"

She wrinkles her nose and grins at him. "No offense captain, but maybe a shower first."

Steve surprises himself by laughing and follows her to the same shuttle that he's been on many times before. She doesn't get on. "I'll be with Sergeant Barnes," she says, waving the automated vehicle forward, "You know where to find me."

_____

The windowed hallway is dimly lit by moonlight, still high in the sky. The fog is already beginning to lift off the side of the mountain, a silvery glow. Steve stands and watches it drift slowly, taking long breaths and holding it in his lungs like he was seventeen and asthmatic again. Bucky was safe here. What had happened was in the past and nothing Steve thought now would be able to change the past.

When he opens the door to the lab where Bucky sleeps, Shuri is already on the computer, indecipherable diagrams projected up on the wall. She looks up as he enters and holds out a bar of chocolate that she'd clearly been breaking pieces off of and nibbling as she worked. "I think the dining staff are asleep but you're probably hungry. We can go to the kitchen together after this if you want."

He wants to resist but the last MRE he'd eaten was over twelve hours ago. He takes the chocolate. "Thank you--Shuri, I wanted to apologize for waking you."

"I was awake anyway," Shuri says, waving him off, "Did you want to see Sergeant Barnes?"

Bucky looks the same as he always does, eye closed with the faint furrow permanently etched between his eyebrows thanks to the cryo. Steve can't help but to step closer to the enclosure as if looking at Bucky from a different angle could change any frozen detail. It was like he'd been placed into cryo yesterday rather than months ago.

He clenched his hand so he wouldn't reach out. He couldn't reach through the glass, couldn't press his thumb to Bucky's forehead or press the back of his fingers to Bucky's cheek. It was enough to know that Bucky was safe.

"How's he doing?"

"Stable," Shuri says.

Steve breaks off a piece of the chocolate and foolishly offers it back to Shuri. She pops it into her mouth, watching him as he drags his eyes away from Bucky to her again.

It was enough to know that Bucky was safe.

"You said you wanted to see me?"

Shuri nods towards Bucky. "It's actually about him. We've made some progress on his deprogramming but we seem to have run into a challenge of sorts."

"A challenge," Steve repeats, breaking off a piece of chocolate for himself.

"Have you ever shared consciousness?" Shuri asks.

Steve swallows the piece of chocolate he'd been chewing on. "I haven't been in the future for that long but I'm fairly sure that's impossible."

"I've done it once," Shuri says, "A really long time ago, when I was really sick. I met my great grandmother. T'Challa's done it many times."

Steve looks at Bucky through the frost.

"There's an herb that the priests burn," Shuri says, "I was ten when I first wanted to figure out how it worked. They wouldn't let me have too much of it but I pinpointed the compounds and made a synthetic version. It doesn't do anything by itself though, it just makes the mind more receptive to new inputs." She holds up a bunch of electrodes like a bouquet of flowers. "But if you're hooked up to someone else and have software developed by a genius like me, you can share consciousness."

"You want me to go into his mind," Steve says flatly.

Shuri sets the electrodes down and bites at her bottom lip. "I guess it's a lot to ask."

"I can't invade his privacy like that."

She looks away, at the indecipherable diagrams on the wall. She was just a kid, Steve realizes, just a kid who didn't understand the weight of what she was asking. But she was also Bucky's best chance at recovery.

"There's no implants in his brain," Shuri says, "There's nothing to take out. There's no scar tissue, nothing obviously wrong. The way they trained those trigger words into him--they must have forced him to associate every one of them with his training as the Winter Soldier." She looks at him again. "Captain, I am skilled but there are a hundred billion neurons in the brain. It is impossible to tease any information about what might have been rewired during his training while he is in a state of cryostasis. I cannot overwrite the hardwired tissue without years of tests in an awake state. This is the most straightforward answer--to change his patterns of thought and to loosen those associations."

"You must have someone else," Steve says, "Someone more skilled than me, more practice at this--brain sharing."

"We have already tried all of the priests and half the laboratory staff," Shuri says, "Sergeant Barnes won't accept."

"And what makes you think that he'd accept me?"

"He knows you," Shuri says, "And you know him."

Steve looks down at his hands, the half eaten chocolate.

"Please think about it," Shuri says quietly.

_____

In the morning, Steve swings by the laboratory a second time, dressed not in soft cloths but his stiff uniform, freshly laundered. The guard steps aside with a nod. The laboratory itself is thankfully empty and Steve doesn't stop himself from stepping close to Bucky this time, back of his fingers pressed against the glass in pathetic parody of touching Bucky's cheek.

"Miss you," Steve whispers in the barest of breaths, searching Bucky's unchanged face. He only allows himself a moment, then he steps away.

There is rumor of alien weaponry coming out of Kolkata. Natasha had sent coordinates. T'Challa told him at breakfast that he'd taken the liberty of refueling the quinjet. There was no time to waste.

_____

The next time he visits is after a reconnaissance mission in Eritrea that had ended in a stabbing and subsequent collapsed lung that left Steve piloting the quinjet towards Wakanda with a chest tube hanging out of his right side. He'd been careful to keep the quinjet pressurized for the whole flight and tucked the chest tube out of sight but Sam had still given him a disapproving look as he ducked out of the quinjet, like he knew exactly what bullshit Steve was up to.

Halfway through dinner, Steve barely had time to pull out his ringing phone and register that it was Natasha before Sam pulled it from his hand and answered with, "Steve is grounded for the foreseeable future because he can't be trusted to follow medical advice without someone there to enforce it."

Steve scowls at Sam who just shrugs back. "How many times did he get shot?" Natasha asks, quiet and staticky over the phone.

"None, but our boy managed to fly home with a collapsed lung."

Natasha snorts. "Hey Rogers, ever heard of barotrauma?"

"Thanks for ganging up on me," Steve says, dutifully mixing his chickpea and spiced beef.

"Sam, you want to come with me instead?" Natasha asks, and Steve resigns himself to his unnecessary but forced medical leave. At least he was here, in Wakanda.

Later, he and Sam are walking through the edges of the city, where the residential neighborhoods faded into the sloping wilderness of the jungle. There is an easy path picked out here through the trees and Sam keeps slowing down like Steve didn't have supersoldier healing ability.

"How's Barnes doing?" Sam asks, like Steve hasn't been thinking about Bucky for the last four hours, already planning to slip away to the laboratory the moment he could excuse himself.

"I don't know," Steve says, "Shuri said that they might be stalled on his progress."

"I heard," Sam says, "She told me about her plan."

"Did she tell you about getting me to do it?"

Sam looks over at him. Behind him, the last vestiges of sunset have faded into the uncertain space of twilight, pale horizon dimming. "I hadn't heard that part."

"I don't think I could bring myself to do it."

Sam doesn't say anything in response, just keeps walking. It's getting darker and Steve has to look at the ground to keep even footing.

"You've done a lot of hard things in your life," Sam finally says, "Harder than most."

"I want to help him," Steve says, "But I can't ever imagine Bucky wanting me to be in his head, reading all of his thoughts. Especially after--you know, HYDRA."

Sam makes an assenting sound, glancing back at Steve with a troubled look.

Steve takes a breath, feeling the twinge of discomfort where his skin had been stitched together again. "What do you think I should do?"

"I think," Sam says, spreading his hands, "I think you know Barnes best. And at the end of the day, I think you're the only person who knows how this will affect you. Both of you."

Below them, the lights come on in the city. The moon is rising. Steve breathes slow and watches his feet.

_____

"This will feel strange the first time," Shuri tells him. There is a technician holding his arm still and a syringe full of milky white liquid.

The electrodes make his scalp itch. Across the room, Bucky remains the same as always behind the impenetrable glass.

"Injecting," the technician announces. Steve closes his eyes and focuses on the way that his feet are planted on the ground.

"Initiating," Shuri says, sounding suddenly far away and Steve starts to feel like his whole body is itching, like his clothes are too tight, like he wants to shrug out of his skin--

_____

Steve opens his eyes. There is cold metal pressed around the left side of his head and a shimmer of metallic tang in the air as he breathes in. It takes a long moment for his eyes to adjust.

He pries the metal away from his head and gets up out of the chair. Light, he thinks desperately--and a flame appears in the palm of his hand. He stares at it before shaking his head and taking a look around the room.

There are hundreds of lockboxes lining the walls of the room, many half open, some with keys dangling from the lock. He turns his attention to the chair--

"This is where I came to forget."

Steve turns. Bucky is leaning against one of the walls, twirling a key on his index finger and staring at the chair. His long hair hands around his face, metal arm glittering.

The light in Steve's palm flickers and dims a little. Bucky's eyes slide up to meet Steve's.

"Sometimes I think it's easier, you know? To forget."

The light goes out. Steve closes his hand around the quenched flame and opens it again, willing the light to come back. "Bucky?" he calls out, wishing he could see anything--

Blinding lights come on overhead. Steve squints, covering his eyes before looking around--

"It's easier," Bucky says from the chair. He bares his teeth at Steve and Steve thinks that it's all wrong when he realizes that Bucky is trying to smile at him. Bucky looks down to where he finishes fastening the restraint on his left hand with his right before reaching up to pull the metal over his head.

"Bucky--don't," Steve croaks leaning over him to grab his arm. Bucky doesn't even resist, just goes pliant in the chair and smiles that horrible smile up at him.

"I want to forget," Bucky says, letting Steve hold his wrist, "Will you help strap me in?"

"I can't--no, I can't do that Bucky."

"It was hardest during the long missions, near the end," Bucky says from behind him. Steve doesn't let go of Bucky's wrist but turns his head to look and there's a second Bucky leaning on the wall of lockboxes again, the keychain swinging round and round on his finger. His eyes are intent on the figure in the chair. "It was the worst when he started remembering that he was a man. He begged for the chair, sometimes."

Steve's grip tightens on chair Bucky's wrist.

"Come on Steve," wall Bucky says, tilting his head up and looking at Steve, "Don't you have any mercy for the poor guy? He's begging you for it."

"This isn't mercy," Steve says tightly.

"I think about the chair, even to this day," wall Bucky says, "I'm torn between asking for it and wishing you'dve come to save me."

"I'm here now," Steve says, looking wall Bucky in the eye.

The scene shifts--the lockboxes whirl away into nothingness as darkness descends. Bucky's wrist remains in his hand and when Steve's vision clears, he's looking at a Bucky ten years younger, hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, mumbling, "Three-two-five-five--"

"Bucky," Steve says.

Bucky's eyes flutter open, unfocused for a few brief moments before he's looking at Steve's face. He breaks out into a smile. "Steve."

_____

Steve gasps awake. The room is a blur and the electrodes taped to his head are suffocating. He can't help it--he unceremoniously peels them off in a swift movement and yanks the IV from his elbow, ignoring the technician who's urging him to please calm down and Shuri coming over from the console to ask if he was okay.

"I need--" Steve pushes himself out of the chair and half stumbles in his haste to leave. "I need some air," he manages, and practically runs out the door.

_____

Shuri finds him later in the evening, after he'd spent a few hours walking through the bustling city market in the sunshine, as far away from the cold lockbox room as he could get. He'd finally made it back to the palace and sat on its front steps, feeling vaguely embarrassed by the way he had reacted and run out when all Shuri had tried to do was help.

"I'm sorry," she says, taking a seat next to him, "I shouldn't have pushed you into doing this."

"No," Steve says, "I should be the one to apologize for my overreaction. You warned me that it could get intense."

"Words can't really capture the experience," Shuri says, propping her chin up on her knees and looking across the palace courtyard.

"No," Steve agrees, "They really can't."

They sit in silence for a few moments before Shuri says, "There's a Jabari priest who is willing to come down from the mountain to try the share."

"No," Steve says. Shuri looks at him. "I think--" Steve swallows and looks back at her. "I think I was meant to be the one to share this."

Shuri is still looking at him. "If you are sure, captain." She touches at her bracelet, looking down at the ground. "I don't think it'll get easier from here."

Steve breathes out. "I'm sure."

_____

The second time he shares, he finds himself on a rooftop in midtown, tall enough to peer over the other buildings for a clear view of a frozen Central Park. The winter wind whips at him, sliding past the cracks in his coat and numbing his ears. The sun is rising. In the corner of the rooftop, huddled against the concrete railing is a dark shape that Steve recognizes as Bucky.

"Hey," Steve murmurs, squatting next to Bucky, "Buck, aren't you cold?"

Bucky's only wearing the tactical vest Steve recognizes from the first time he'd seen Bucky in DC and there's frost on his metal arm. Bucky says nothing, huddled in a ball, staring blankly ahead.

Steve shrugs his coat off his shoulders and drapes it around Bucky, ignoring the shivering cold that bites at his skin through the thin sweater he'd worn. He can't remember why he's in civilian gear instead of his uniform.

"Come on," Steve says, hooking his arm around Bucky's flesh and bone one, "Let's go inside."

"It's useless," Bucky says from behind him. Steve looks over his shoulder. This other Bucky only has on a red shirt with jeans and a baseball cap but he doesn't seem fazed by the cold at all. He just has his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans. "He's supposed to wait for his handler here. He's not going anywhere. You might as well take your coat back."

"Why do you do that?" Steve asks, "Why do you refer to you as him?"

Baseball cap Bucky laughs. "That's not me," he says, jutting his chin out at tactical vest Bucky, "That's not even human."

Steve forces himself not to look away, forces himself to keep his voice steady. "What is he then?"

Baseball cap Bucky narrows his eyes. "A machine I wish I could break."

Tactical vest Bucky shifts, seeming to have finally registered Steve's presence. His voice is dull as he looks at Steve. "Are you my handler?"

"Yes," Steve says without thinking. He doesn't want this Bucky to die of hypothermia. "Come on, up."

Tactical vest Bucky gets to his feet. Steve's coat falls from his shoulders without acknowledgement. Baseball cap Bucky makes a derisive sound. Steve ignores it. Tactical vest Bucky barely gets one step without staggering, hand moving to press against his abdomen. Steve can't believe he missed it, the crimson mixed with gravel dirtying the snow up here, the shallow breaths that tactical vest Bucky had been taking--

"Let him die," baseball cap Bucky suggests.

"You know," Steve says angrily, pushing his shoulder under tactical vest Bucky's armpit in effort to get him moving, "I love you Buck but you can be a self-sabotaging asshole."

Baseball cap Bucky doesn't say anything back. He just watches as they struggle the fifty feet to the rooftop door, tactical vest Bucky's breath soft and wet in Steve's ear as he hauled him forward. The wind picks up and Steve grits his teeth through the last few feet before he can finally fling open the door--

He's in France with Bucky leaning on his shoulder as they made their way through the street, the smell of beer puffing against his cheek as Bucky shook with laughter and wasn't that rare? He couldn't remember the last time he'd head Bucky laugh--

He hits the water and gets the breath knocked out of him. There's a helicopter here, rotors waving in the current, and there's Bucky here too. He grabs blindly, hand closing miraculously around soft fabric and kicks upward, pulling Bucky up beside him--

He's in Germany and Bucky can't stop looking at him. And who knows what the hell Zola did to him on that table because he can't keep going at this pace either--so Steve wordlessly shoulders half of Bucky's weight, ignoring the half hearted protest--

He's in Brooklyn, on the fire escape at the end of the hall of their shitty Concord Street tenement. He's eighty years younger, in another body. The fire escape is hardly ever free except this early in the morning when Lucille stops chain smoking and Lou and his buddies haven't taken up residence to catcall all the dames walking past. He's in his old body, looking down at himself. A young Bucky steps out on the fire escape, dress shirt wrinkled, smelling like cheap liquor and lipstick smeared beneath his jaw where he didn't think to wash.

"You know," young Bucky says, but he looks past young Steve, directly at Steve. "I saved you too."

Steve remembers this morning. The night before they'd gotten into a huge argument about something stupid, some inconsequential aspect of Steve's stubborn inability to take care of himself properly or Bucky's plethora of vices which began and ended with Steve's hardheaded conviction that Bucky was trying his damned hardest to kill himself without saying it out loud.

Steve finds himself swallowing against a sob.

The fire escape overlooks the back of the building, crowded in by endless repeats of the same grey brick. Only a pale stripe of blue above to suggest daybreak.

Below, two heads bent towards each other, murmuring quietly. A soft apology. From whom, Steve can't remember.

_____

He wakes up, blinking away tears. Across the room, in the cryostasis machine, Bucky looks unchanged.

He lets the technician peel off the electrodes one by one and pull his IV gently. He keeps his eyes closed and tries not to let on that he's shaking.

Someone touches his shoulder. Steve opens his eyes.

"Did it go better, this time?" Shuri asks.

"I'm not sure," Steve answers, closing his eyes again, "I think I need a break."

_____

He takes two back to back missions chasing down intel that Natasha somehow dug out of the CIA. The third, he's back on domestic soil with Sam, holed up in a tiny sublet in Silver Spring on Hill's request, in case backup was needed. But the day came and went and no DC media outlet reported anything suspicious so the two of them chalked it up to a success. It's only after that, six weeks since he'd last seen Bucky, that Steve finally finds himself with enough free time to go back to Wakanda again.

T'Challa is standing in the laboratory, looking out the window when Steve opens the doors. He doesn't turn, but he does say, "Hello Steve."

"T'Challa," Steve says, "It's good to see you again."

"You as well," T'Challa says and turns to look at him with a smile, "I hope your missions have been successful?"

"As well as they can," Steve says, then laughs, "Still a fugitive, unfortunately."

"You are always welcome here."

Steve sobers. "I know. I don't know how I could begin to thank you enough."

T'Challa waves the thought away. "I hear Sergeant Barnes is making good recovery."

Steve can't help but to look over at Bucky but he looks exactly the same as he always does. He's not sure what exactly he'd been expecting.

"Shuri is extraordinary," Steve says honestly.

"I hear you have been sharing consciousness with Sergeant Barnes?"

"Yes," Steve says, "Shuri told me that you'd shared consciousness many times in the past?"

"I have seen my ancestors and spoken with my father," T'Challa says, "I have never shared with another person. I have only seen the priests use this technology to guide someone through a particularly difficult death." He smiles wryly. "To use it to save Sergeant Barnes--Steve I believe you are the first to use it in this particular way."

"Ah," Steve says.

"I'm sorry I do not have better advice to give," T'Challa murmurs, "But know that it was a difficult task for me too."

_____

The third time, Steve finds himself in an unfamiliar house, window taking up the length of the wall of the living room. The garden outside is lit in silvery moonlight and the house is silent, save for the ticking of the clock on the far wall. There's a kitchen off to the left where a shadowy figure sits at the breakfast nook. The silhouette of the sniper rifle strapped to his back is stark against the pale light coming in through the french doors.

Steve steps forward. Bucky's head snaps up and he stares.

"Hey Bucky," Steve says quietly, lifting up both of his hands.

Bucky doesn't move or reply.

The mail on the kitchen counter is addressed to Alexander Pierce.

"Offer him some milk." Baseball cap Bucky is back, leaning against the fridge. He looks dispassionately at Steve, at the mail, at the replica of himself sitting in the corner of the kitchen. "Tell him what a good boy he's been."

Sniper rifle Bucky keeps his eyes on Steve, still and expectant.

"I'm not Pierce," Steve says.

"Doesn't matter. He'll take it from the scientists, the trainers, whoever. All he wanted was to be a good boy."

Steve looks at baseball cap Bucky. "And what about you?" he asks, "What do you want?"

The room shifts, walls folding out and fading, trees rising around them with the sliver of moon still high in the sky. The woods smell like acrid smoke from the nearest bombed out village, winds whipping away the smell of men who'd spent too long crawling in the dirt. Here was Steve's old motorcycle, the campfire already reduced to ashes. Here were two men sleeping, apart from the others.

Steve didn't need to look closer to know what Bucky was showing him. There was Bucky's hand on his mouth, Bucky's hand wrapped around his cock, Bucky's lips touching the back of his neck. His own shuddering breaths, heavy with the effort of being silent, stilted in the cold.

That first night, still two months away from the fateful train ride. It was the first night that had truly been freezing and they'd shared space for warmth. They'd still been high on adrenaline, fresh off a recon mission and Bucky had been half hard as he pressed close to Steve. He'd looked so weary about it, the perpetual frown between his eyebrows that Steve always wanted to smooth away, silent apology in the short nod that he gave Steve. Steve was tired too--tired of the way that Bucky refused to unburden himself in a way that he had never done before the war, silent over a cup of whiskey, silent staring into the campfire.

They never kissed because that was a rule to be operated by, if the excuse of war was to be used as a cover. Just two buddies helping each other out, making things more bearable.

The trees melt away. Walls rise up out of the dirt and loud conversation fades in, raucous laughter and the clinking of glasses. Bucky is sitting with the Howlies, hunched over an empty beer glass and playing with a coaster, listening to Morita spout off his bullshit. Steve is just close enough to see Gabe lean across the table, tap Bucky's arm and gesture towards a woman sitting at the bar who'd been watching Bucky. He points at Bucky, looking at him meaningfully.

Bucky smiles briefly, shaking his head. Gabe points at himself. Bucky shrugs and nods. Gabe gets up, slapping him on the shoulder as he does, and goes to introduce himself to the woman.

Bucky smiles again. He looks up, across the bar and his smile fades as quickly as it came. Steve follows his line of sight and sees himself, carrying a tray of beers and caught up in conversation with some captain whose name he can't remember. 

When he looks back at Bucky, Bucky is looking directly at him. Bucky nods once, and the walls of the bar whirl away--

Bright sunlight in Prospect Park, two figures walking towards the bay. Young Steve must have said something funny because Bucky throws his head back and laughs before looping an arm around Steve's shoulder and pulling him in tight--

A bathtub and the sharp smell of antiseptic. Young Steve dabs at a cut over Bucky's right eyebrow. He turns away to get another piece of gauze and Steve can see now what the younger version of him had missed: the look that passes over Bucky's face, the tightening of his fingers around the ceramic edge, gone in the moment that young Steve turns back around--

A familiar apartment. The boxes are packed because his mother's nursing career had always paid more than the occasional pamphlet or sign painting job Steve could find. Young Steve lies curled up on the well-worn couch, sleeping off the exhaustion of moving. Young Bucky is sitting on the armrest, looking down at him, hand curved around the back of young Steve's head, thumb stroking lightly at the hair behind his ear.

Steve closes his eyes. This feels like something he shouldn't be privy to--something that Bucky had kept locked up in his head all this time until Steve stepped in and forced it out.

"It was always just you," young Bucky says softly. He looks away from young Steve, up at where Steve is standing, and smiles.

_____

Steve opens his eyes.

_____

In Kaunas, Steve almost misses a dead drop and gets shot in the leg for his effort. The wound isn't bad--just an angry gash across the back of his calf where the bullet grazed through his boots--but it forces him to lean heavily on Sam on their way out the roof towards where Natasha has the helicopter ready.

"You okay?" Sam asks as he eases Steve down on the floor of the helicopter. Natasha barely spares him a glance before she's already swinging the helicopter away from the rooftop, leaving the echoes of gunfire behind.

Steve holds pressure on the wound himself, fingers slick with his own blood. It's only oozing a bit now. "Thanks Sam."

"You want to talk about it?" Sam says, slumping down on the floor across from him and reaching into one of the pockets where he keeps extra-strength painkillers for Steve. He holds out a pill. "Normally you're not this sloppy, cap."

Steve swallows and declines the painkiller with a shake of his head. "A lot on my mind."

"You want to talk about it?" Sam asks.

Steve shakes his head, unable to meet Sam's eyes. Instead he looks through the window, at where the city is giving way to trees and road, winding river glittering in the sunlight.

"It's going to be a long ride," Natasha tells them, forgoing subtlety entirely as she glances back at Steve.

Steve surprises himself by laughing. "Thanks. It's just--" He shakes his head again. Beneath his fingers, his skin is beginning to knit itself back together. "Not my secret to tell."

_____

Sam comes with him the next time he goes to Wakanda.

His first stop is to the laboratory by himself, thankfully empty. Steve steps close to the glass and presses his forehead against it, closing his eyes and imagining that he had his forehead on Bucky's shoulder, that Bucky's arms were around him. He allows himself just a moment of wishing.

He opens his eyes. Bucky remains the same as always, neutral expression with the faint furrow between his eyebrows.

He finds Shuri and Sam sitting together at lunch, though their plates of mostly untouched food have been pushed to the side in favor of one of Sam's Redwing drones. Shuri is reading a hologram her bracelet is displaying and Sam gestures at the drone, voice too low to carry.

Steve takes a seat near T'Challa and Nakia instead, smiling in greeting. T'Challa catches his eye and tilts his head towards his sister with a shake of his head. "No sense of propriety," T'Challa says, but he's grinning as he says it.

Steve loses himself in the meal and lets himself think about nothing as he listened to T'Challa and Nakia talk about a late cassava shipment to M'Baku, the small samples of vibranium they'd promised a consortium of universities, Samsung's latest offer for information on some of Shuri's tech. It was hard, sometimes, to figure out which one felt more real: the world out here, or the world within Bucky's mind.

"Steve?"

Steve jerks back into attention--only to realize that he's the last one sitting in the hall, meal half eaten. Shuri is touching his shoulder, looking down at him.

"Do you need some rest? We can start fresh tomorrow."

"No," Steve says, picking up his own plate to clear away. "I'm ready."

_____

The smell of blood and urine is overlaid with that of damp concrete and antiseptic. The room is illuminated by the wide-armed surgical lights, spotlighting the figure on the table. Blood smeared across the dirty white sheets where an arm used to be, dripping on the floor. There are at least five technicians in the room--one is putting a line in Bucky's other arm, one is at his head, pressing a face mask across his mouth and nose. One has a bone saw, already positioned at his left arm. Across the room, a silver arm gleams.

"This is your destiny," Zola says, from the foot of the table, peering down at Bucky.

"You can't save me from this one."

Steve turns his head. Baseball cap Bucky stands next to him with his arms folded, looking at himself on the table.

"I should have jumped off after you," Steve says.

"Don't be stupid," baseball cap Bucky says, "You'd have snapped your neck."

"You were always meant to become this," Zola says.

On the table, Bucky opens his eyes. He searches the room unseeingly before he focuses in on where Steve is. Steve steps forward and tries to shove away one of the technicians--but his hands pass straight through the man. On the table, Bucky's eyes follow him, lips shaping his name wordlessly.

"Shall we get started?" Zola asks, smiling.

Steve grabs Bucky's right hand. It's solid so Steve squeezes it. Bucky looks up at him and his whisper is barely audible.

"I'm scared."

"I'm here," Steve says, wishing with his entire being that it had been true.

The bone saw starts up with a whirr. Steve closes his eyes and holds on tight--

He lands hard on his back. Bucky's pushes him down against the broken beam, forces his head to hang off the edge of the splintering helicarrier. He feels a searing blow against the side of his cheek, feels the headache building. Bucky doesn't let up--hits him a second time on the other side and Steve can taste the bright tang of fresh blood from where his teeth have cut into the side of his mouth.

"You're my mission," Bucky snarls.

"You're my friend," Steve chokes back, the same familiar words from a play that'd already been written and performed.

Bucky should have hit him again. But instead, his fist doesn't move from its cocked position. Steve can barely hear his words past the ringing in his ears. "You were ready to die here."

Steve tries to open his puffy black eyes as far as he can, to see Bucky's face. "Yeah Buck," he says, resigned, "I was."

The helicarrier gives a great heaving groan as another explosion rockets through the metal and glass. Steve feels himself slipping away, body tumbling through the air--

_____

Steve jerks awake.

"How many more times?" he asks after all the electrodes have been taken off, after Shuri touches his shoulder and looks into his face, "How many more times do you think it'll take?"

"I think we are close," Shuri says, and is kind enough to ignore the way he has to turn his face, wipe a quick hand across his eyes.

"Okay," he says and gets up out of the chair. He leans against the window, looking out over the mountainside and the city below. The technician leaves first. Shuri touches his shoulder again as she leaves and he is glad for the gesture, for the solitude.

Across the room, Bucky's eyes are still closed behind the glass.

_____

Interpol nearly catches him in Beijing. It'd been a risky operation in the first place, cobbled together from sources that Hill had called shady and that Natasha had called a suicide mission--but the implications of a potential Tesseract sighting had been too important for Steve to ignore.

What it really means though, is that he spends an entire three weeks barely dodging agents who knew the city like the back of their hand, among a nearly homogenous Chinese population. It's a blessing when Natasha finally arrives with one of Tony Stark's private jets, begrudgingly lent to pick up two Yue Minjun pieces for Stark's private art collection.

What it really means is that he lets himself be seen in two different cities after he leaves Beijing. He waits another two weeks, watching interpol chase his ghost far away from Africa before he is comfortable enough to chart course for Wakanda again.

_____

"We've been running the tests," Shuri tells him after he settles into the chair and lets the technician glue the electrodes to his forehead. "If this goes well, I think it might be the last time."

"That would be good," Steve says, mustering up a smile, and braces himself.

"Injecting," the technician murmurs.

"Initializing, Shuri replies and then--

_____

They are in a truck. Bucky's has his mask and goggles on, an intimidating figure in the passenger seat. He has a rifle across his lap.

Steve's hands are steady on the steering wheel. The grey snow blows at them, illuminated in the headlights and peeling past the windshield.

"Where are we going?" Steve asks.

Bucky shifts in the other seat. His voice comes out hoarse as he speaks, long disused. "You are taking me home."

Steve considers this answer, the icy road spread out in front of them, the tall treeline looming over them. It's freezing inside the truck. Why is it always cold?

He decides in an instant--jerks the steering wheel all the way around in a sudden U-turn. He hears the rifle slam against the passenger door, feels his seat belt cutting into his shoulder as he tries to change course--

There is a chair on a pedestal in front of him. There is a console in front of him, the peeling paint on the buttons revealing how old the machinery is. Beside him, Bucky stands and looks up wordlessly at the chair. There is no expression to be read past the dark goggles and the mask.

There are six other tanks in this room, light filtering through yellowed glass and revealing the shapes of other humans inside. Steve remembers this place. Home, Bucky had said.

"You're not getting in that," Steve says.

Bucky tilts his head, a question in the gesture. And then--

Different room. A chair and an iron coffin swung open on its hinges. Bucky moves forward and touches the iron like he's about to step in. Steve grabs his metal arm and Bucky stops. He looks at Steve over his shoulder.

Where was the other Bucky, to explain all of this? The Bucky who looked on hopelessly, lowering his head to shield his face with his baseball cap?

"Come with me," Steve says to this masked Bucky and tries to--

They are on a train to Switzerland. Bucky is wearing his blue coat and turning a box of ammunition over and over in his hands. In the window, the fields roll past with the Alps rising in the background like a postcard. Steve hears himself say, "What do you think, Buck?"

"Ever thought about going upstate?" Bucky asks, "Lot less people and bullshit."

"Yeah, as if you'd leave Brooklyn," Steve says, elbowing him in the side. Bucky smirks and leans back, pressing his shoulder against Steve's.

"Guess I'm stuck in Brooklyn with you," he says, all casual. He looks out the window.

Steve studies his profile against the green landscape, the way he sucks his lower lip in, the sudden crease in his forehead. In the real version, he'd spouted off some bullshit about Bucky loving people, the way he'd spent his entire youth conning the neighborhood into singing his praises. But what he says softly now is, "It wouldn't be home without you, Buck."

Bucky turns his head, eyes wide. He doesn't say anything for a long moment, but then his lips part and--

The train becomes a dark room. He's looking down at a sweaty mess, Bucky's eyes fluttering under his eyelids, mumbling, "Three-two-five-five--"

"Bucky," he says, shaking his shoulder. Bucky's eyes open and it's always the same, the beat of confusion before he focuses in on Steve and smiles--

The dark room becomes the tenement on Concord Street, Steve standing at the stove, boiling potatoes for dinner. Bucky reads a paperback he'd picked up from the corner store out loud and it's better than having the radio on. Steve stirs the pot and looks up, across the room when Bucky stops reading. Bucky is looking at him with laughter written into the corner of his eyes and Steve can't help but feel light and ridiculous too instead of defensive. He's dressed in one of Bucky's old shirts from when he was sixteen but it still hangs on his body like a tent, sleeves rolled up nearly to the armpits. Bucky looks back down at the book, smiling, and picks up on the next sentence--

The tenement smooths out into a different, warmer kitchen. Steve's ma stands at the stove now, a pie cooling on the counter.

"When can we eat it?" Steve whines, standing on tiptoes to look at it. His ma shoos him away, tells him to go play in the living room. But he catches Bucky's eye on the way--they've already concocted a plan to steal a piece before she can notice--

They are in Shuri's laboratory for the first time. Bucky sits on the table in his soft white tank, hair brushing his shoulders. The cryostasis tank is open.

"Are you sure about this?" Steve asks, and then he hears himself say, "I'm a fugitive. We have nowhere to go."

"Then let's go nowhere," Bucky says, reaching out. He slips his hand into Steve's and looks up at him with a tentative smile.

Steve grips Bucky's hand tight. "Okay," he says, "Okay, Buck."

_____

He opens his eyes.

"Something happened," Shuri says, inflected in a question.

Steve swallows. The last scene--it'd felt so real that he'd almost expected Bucky to be out of cryo already. "I think so," he says.

_____

Shuri told him that it'd been best for them to wake Bucky slowly, over the course of a week, to stabilize the deprogramming and to make it as least traumatic as possible. Steve had stayed with him for that first full day, when they'd slowly brought his temperature up, before Fury had called with a new lead on a former HYDRA agent that had been spotted hawking old alien tech in Cape Town.

"I can take it," Sam insisted over satellite phone, "You should stay with Barnes."

But the agent wasn't someone they could dismiss so easily, if the intel Natasha had dug up was to be trusted. It meant that Steve found himself flying a cloaked quinjet in South African airspace the following morning, waiting for Hill to find him a good place to land.

It wasn't until nearly two weeks later that Steve could come back to Wakanda.

_____

The recovery villa is on the outskirts of the city, at the far end of the lake. "We do not have the equivalent of your western hospitals here," T'Challa had told him, "We try our best to treat the sick in their homes."

Shuri had flown to Oakland to attend a scholarship dinner so Steve meets with the doctor who had been overseeing Bucky's care in the villa. Vitals stable, normal neurologic checks every twelve hours. When he'd tentatively brought up the question of Bucky's psych assessment, he'd quickly learned that there was no such thing as psychiatry here in Wakanda. "In the west, there are too many things considered as pathological," she tells Steve, smiling pleasantly, "Here, we like to consider things in an ever changing state of flux."

He's alone as he rounds the last turn into the villa that T'Challa had pointed him towards. A group of children run past him in the opposite direction, giggling and shouting at one another. He spots Bucky dressed in bright robes, bent over the plants of the large garden in the center of the small circle of houses, watering can in hand. As if he'd called out, Bucky looks up and meets his eyes.

"Hi," Steve as soon as he gets close enough. Bucky breaks out into a wide smile, dropping the watering can next to the row of bean plants and pulls him into a hug. Steve wraps his arms around Bucky's back and presses his face into Bucky's neck.

_____

The house where Bucky is staying is small but clearly well loved. Bucky busies himself with boiling water to make tea. Steve looks at the paintings hung up on the wall, bright herons taking flight over a blue lake, rhinoceros grazing in the long grass. The floor is cool under his bare feet. Turning, he watches Bucky pull cups from a cupboard, seemingly at ease with his single arm.

Bucky looks up. Their eyes meet. Steve smiles. Bucky smiles back, looking away.

Steve sits on the low couch, on top of a soft blanket. He hears the pour of water, and then after a moment, "Here."

He takes the cup. Bucky watches him for another moment before turning to get his own.

"I feel like you have the upper hand here," Bucky says as he takes a seat on the ground across from Steve, a smooth movement even with the teacup cradled in his hand. Steve leans forward, elbows on his knees. Bucky keeps his eyes on Steve's face. "You know, seeing as you've been in my brain and all."

"I'm sorry," Steve says, looking at his own hands, "I don't think there was a better way--"

"You don't need to apologize," Bucky interrupts, "I feel like, maybe I should."

"Why would you have to apologize?"

This time, Bucky is the one to look down. His voice is quiet. "There were some things that you saw. Maybe they're best left in my head."

Steve slides off the couch to kneel on the floor in front of Bucky. He sets his hand on Bucky's shoulder, presses it against his neck, then cups his jawline. Bucky half leans into the touch, head still bowed. Steve kisses the dark hair, keeps his closed mouth pressed against the top of Bucky's head for a long moment, thumb smoothing over Bucky's cheek.

"Bucky," he says after a while, "How would you feel about evening the playing field?"

_____

Bucky told him that it felt like slipping into the deep end of a dark pool, disoriented and floating until Steve arrived and brought the architecture of life with him. For Steve, it felt like looking into a blank canvas, pencil poised but unable to draw until he felt Bucky's presence.

He starts in what he can remember of Bucky's recovery villa with bright yellow walls and cool floor, a cool breeze bringing with it the scent of sweetpea. Bucky appears in a red shirt and jeans, but no baseball cap, hair pulled back into a messy bun.

"Good likeness," Bucky tells him. Steve smiles and digs deeper--

Summer thunderstorm in Brooklyn, two boys caught outside without an umbrella. The sun is going down, coloring everything in gold and throwing a technicolor halo up against the sky in the opposite direction. Steve had come all the way from his latest job in Manhattan in a new subway car to join Bucky for dinner because they didn't have time to celebrate Bucky's birthday last week, plus he'd just gotten a bonus for all the extra produce he'd had to haul into the store.

The reason why this was one of Steve's favorite memories could be captured in a single shot. Bucky, laughing under a drugstore awning, the sunset lighting up his face. Steve watches him and lets himself pretend just for a moment with delirious happiness that he could reach out and take Bucky by the hand. Spin him slow in the sparkling rain like a goddamn sap. A time before the war, when their biggest problem was how to pay next month's rent, before the serum, before the train, the cold, before waking up--

Springtime in Austria. The sun has risen but half the Howlies are missing--the night had been too warm and Steve had technically said he didn't expect any of them back until the afternoon when they'd make a night train bound for Berlin, so it wasn't a surprise, really. He comes back from his morning perimeter patrol to find Bucky in his tent, sleeping with his face pillowed on one of Steve's jackets. Steve hadn't expected Bucky back, thought he'd still be out with Dugan.

He sits on the dirt, looking down at Bucky's face. He touches the fragile shell of Bucky's ear, traces it down to his stubbled jaw, the soft hair at the nape of his neck. "I thought about telling you, even then," he says.

Across the tent, real Bucky stands with his arms crossed.

"Sorry for being a coward," Steve whispers and then--

The train, the wind whipping past, his arm outstretched, that last scream--

He has his hands on the controls, the frozen arctic on his horizon. A hand drops down on his shoulder. Real Bucky looks at him.

"I was scared at first," Steve says, out of tandem with that last conversation he'd had with Peggy. "But then I thought I might be joining you."

The ice looms large. The impact feels like--

A street in DC, a mask lying in the street. The shock of Bucky's face, the confusion and the swell of elation following fast on its heels--

Brooklyn, with all two of the windows of their apartment flung open in effort to get the stale air moving, humid heat clinging onto their skin. They're lying in the dark, only half listening to whatever radio drama the station had dredged up for this miserable night. Bucky rolls over on his side and pokes Steve in the back until Steve has no choice but to roll on his back and grumble, "Quit it, asshole."

"Think we got any ice left in the icebox?"

"Come on, Buck--that's to keep the food cold," Steve says, forcing himself to open his eyes. Bucky's already pushing himself up, stepping over Steve to get to the kitchen. He listens to the sounds of Bucky rummaging around in the kitchen, faucet creaking on and off again. He'd half dozed off when Bucky drops something blessedly cool across his chest.

"Whassit?" Steve mumbled.

"Wet shirt," Bucky answers, lying back down with a cold towel over his forehead.

It'd been such a stupid gesture, one that would last maybe five minutes tops before his own skin heated up the shirt enough that it'd just made everything more humid and awful. But Steve listens to Bucky's breathing even out and then turned on his side look at him.

"I thought about us living forever," he murmurs, looking at this young Bucky in the dark, mouth lax and collecting drool like the endearing idiot he was. "I thought about us growing old together. I thought about us never leaving this awful apartment. What a fucking miserable life that would have been." He smiles, a useless gesture in the dark. "I still wanted it more than anything."

The room falls away. The woods at night. The same scene that Bucky had shown him months ago, the same acrid smoke and frigid wind. Bucky had wrung a silent spasm of an orgasm out of him and they'd laid there for a long moment, trying to control their own breathing.

This time, Steve turns around in the sleeping bag to face Bucky. He puts his hand against Bucky's cheek, jaw clenched against the sudden heaviness in his own chest. He says, "I should have kissed you."

The woods fade away. In its place, the same bar in Lyon that Bucky had shown him. After Steve had come back with the tray of beers, Bucky had excused himself and slipped on his coat. Steve grabs his coat too, giving his sheepish apology to the Howlies and hurrying out the door.

Bucky stands outside, looking up at the night sky. "I can make it back myself," he says.

"Beer is just wasted on me anyway," Steve replies, stepping up next to Bucky, "Let me come with you."

Bucky looks away from the sky, back at Steve and gives a crooked grin. The street is empty and half the streetlights are out. This time, Steve reaches and grasps Bucky's wrist. He steps in, crowding Bucky, and lowers his eyes to the line of Bucky's collarbone.

He says, "I should have kissed you."

The street brightens into the glow of snow on a mountaintop. Steve readjusts his grip under Bucky's remaining arm, ignoring the protest of his own cracked ribs and the shaking in his legs. The world stretches out below them. Bucky coughs weakly, a wet sound.

They stand together, two huddled figures. A prolonged silence as Steve thought how to best ask where Bucky would go next.

"You had to know that I'd follow you," real Bucky says, somewhere from behind.

"I've long given up taking anything for granted," Steve says.

Real Bucky walks into his line of sight, brushing past his right shoulder and turning to face him. Steve looks up at him, at the tired line of his shoulders and the deep circles under his eyes. He carries himself differently than any of the previous versions of Bucky did, hunched in like he's guarding a secret. But he's looking at Steve with a faint smile now, reaching out a hand to cup Steve's cheek.

"You could have kissed me then too."

"Could I?" Steve asks, tilting his head into real Bucky's hand. "Can I?"

Bucky laughs and it's the best thing Steve's ever heard.

_____

Steve opens his eyes. Across the room, Bucky sits up in his chair.

_____

They make it down the hall, barely out of the line of sight of the guards before Bucky crowds Steve in against the wall. He kisses Steve with his hand at the back of Steve's neck, smiling and sweet.

Steve pulls him closer, opens his mouth and deepens the kiss. A long, perfect moment. Then Bucky pulls back, brushes his lips against the corner of Steve's lips and settles his face into the crook of Steve's neck.

"Grow old with me," Steve murmurs, stroking Bucky's hair.

Bucky laughs disbelievingly against Steve's skin, but Steve can feel his smile too.

_____

"How's Barnes doing?" Sam asks when they meet up in Mexico City to chase down the latest rumor about HYDRA striking up a deal with drug cartels to smuggle their own wares. They're stuck doing surveillance on some warehouse, waiting in a beat up van across the street for anyone to show up.

"He's doing good," Steve says, smiling. "He's working on a farm now."

"A farm," Sam repeats, "What with like, chickens and cows?"

"Goats," Steve says.

"Oh man," Sam says, "No comment."

"I think he's happy," Steve says and feels the thrill of saying the words.

"Maybe I'll go and say hi sometime," Sam says, "I figure even fugitives like us deserve some vacation time, you know?"

"I think he'd like that," Steve says, and turns his face to hide his grin.


End file.
